He’d get this asshole if it was the last thing he did.
In the closet he thoroughly checked each hanger, seeking a stick-on tracker or a chip adhered to the plastic. He searched every seam and pocket of the few pieces of clothing she had in her closet, then moved to the backpack and other things on the shelf above. Once he was satisfied that there were no tracking devices in the closet, he searched her bedroom, inspecting the lower drawers of her dresser first, but avoiding the top drawer women usually reserved for lingerie. He searched her perfectly folded jeans and tops. The Wesleyan T-shirt was telling. People who were on the run generally took the items with them that meant something. He’d already discovered that she was a Wesleyan graduate, and the shirt told him that she was proud of that accomplishment. He’d seen Stormy’s harsh exterior slip several times, and he wondered how much she’d had to change since running from Kutcher.
Forcing his personal interest in Stormy away again, he searched through her top drawer. Sifting through her bras and panties sent his mind right back to being inside her, ravishing her delicious mouth, seeing her lips wrapped around his cock.
Fuck. Now he was hard.
Logan closed his eyes and counted backward from fifty. At five he was still at half-mast. There was no ridding his mind of her.
He gritted his teeth and forced himself to at least think like the PI that he was. He reached into the drawer and assessed her lingerie. Matching lace bras and panties, although not high-end, were not department-store brands either. Another bit of intel for his Stormy file. At some point, she probably had a pretty good life.
The more he tried to disengage his personal feelings, the more difficult it became. Standing just a foot away from where he’d been when she’d taken his cock in her mouth and swallowed everything he’d had to give made it nearly impossible. His cock stirred just thinking of their slick bodies moving together as he held her knees at his sides and she met each powerful thrust with a lift and tilt of her hips.
Great. He was hard again.
He ran a frustrated hand through his hair and slid his eyes from the bed to the framed picture of her mother. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and his erection softened. He took out the photo and found a tracking device attached to the inside of the frame. He tore the fucker out. He knew exactly what it was, because he’d used them a dozen times. This one was a cheap piece of shit, like the traceable SIM card Kutcher had put in Stormy’s phone. A knockoff brand that sent data through the Internet. The guy knew what he was doing. He’d probably used them in his drug business.
He pocketed the device, then carefully put the picture back into the frame and set it beside the bed. He picked up the pillow and brought it to his nose. Freshly washed. He had a feeling that the harshness Stormy portrayed wasn’t the only change she’d made either for Kutcher or while running from him. He’d had the distinct feeling when they were together that she was acting how she thought she should rather than how she might if she weren’t trying to escape her fear for a few hours. He was all for rough and dirty sex, but Stormy wasn’t the type of woman you fucked hard and walked away from. She was the type of woman you made love to, while reserving the hard fucking for the intimate, wild, sexy nights couples shared. But day-to-day? She seemed more the flowers and wine type of girl, and the more he looked around her apartment, the more pieces of her life he put together, and the more he wanted to know about her.
Logan methodically checked every item in the bathroom and the laundry closet, then worked his way through the pantry and the kitchen cabinets. He eyed the calendar on the wall and flipped back through the pages. She’d marked off the date Kutcher had been put in jail, and had been counting down the days until his release, marking each one with a red X. He couldn’t imagine the fear she carried with her every moment of the day. He flipped back through the months, finding angry black marks every few weeks. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that those were the dates Kutcher had taken his hands to her.